Saturday, July 26, 2014

DNA-Out of Print Short Fiction: GAURAV DEKA

The Last Sin

Gaurav Deka

For some time she stood still,
hunched over the sink, grabbing the head of the tap with both her hands, like a
sinner at the aisle, breathing heavily. The tap gave a spurting cough, dripped
a few more times before running dry. She stood there, arched like a bow in
tension. The sound of birds, the cawing and cooing coming from the cage hung
from the window-bar, went through her head, pricking and lancing like an
uncomfortable piece of shrapnel. It didn’t allow her to think in peace. She had
to decide. Find a way. Quick. The birds chattered all the more, and she could
feel their beaks gnawing at her nerves, her brain-mass. She had to keep her
calm. Slowly she put her hands inside the water. Ripples ran through the
square basin, the clatter of utensils hitting against each other added to the
noise of the birds, and the sink overflowed, as she pulled out a steel knife
from below the water.

*

The other night, they had lain
asleep under stinging orange bars of light from the street lamps which invaded
the room every night. Akhim tossed and turned. The light made sleeping
difficult for him, not that he was a sound sleeper in general.

He turned around to look at her.
She always slept in a brown dressing gown, torn below the right arm-pit, and
with her back to him. The tear looked fresh. He closed one eye and focused on
the stitches. The frayed ones stood out. The wall-clock he had brought the day
they had married had its hands at three and forty-seven. He realised it would
be impossible to drift back to sleep unless … unless he touched her, poked and
jabbed, made the tear wider, pressed and clawed at her skin reddening it to
wounds and gaps, and released on her. That was, more often than not, his last
resort, his only lullaby. Armed with a nascent morning wood, Akhim snaked his
way to her where the sharp smell of the ittar, which she had picked up off Yakub’s shop, welcomed him. ‘Stupid
bitch,’ he muttered under his breath. He dragged in a long breath, and decided
he would rather smell blood.

He picked up the ivory-toothed keyring
near the mantelpiece and began to navigate it up and down the crack of her
arm-pit where the tear was, up and down, up and down, quietly cajoling her to
ditch her beauty sleep for lust. His breaths became ragged as he opened his
mouth and pressed his lips below her neck dragging in more of her smell, and
the swoosh of the keyring turned frenetic. She was still asleep.

With his other hand he made his
way up her spine to her neck and held it in a loose grip to position it. He
opened his mouth wider releasing warm breath on her as he fumbled with the keyring
around the crack. And opening it fully, he suddenly sank his teeth into her
skin, tearing at it. She woke with a start and a resounding scream. Blood oozed
out of her bitten flesh. He smelled it and let out an awful laugh. The birds
screamed out loud in response, and shook the cage.

She turned quickly..The keyring
was now in his mouth. He was sucking at it. It smelled of her.

‘What the fuck!?’ she bellowed at
him.

He hit her.

He chopped three times into her
tummy and she fell down on the cold hard floor, clutching herself in the foetal
position. He showered kicks onto her body, undressing himself with each kick.
He lay on top of her. The floor felt cold to his shins. Holding her by her
stretch-mark ridden stomach, he entered her. She didn’t resist, she was used to
it. When he was done she dragged herself to the guest bathroom and stayed
locked in there for the few remaining hours till dawn. While she wept silently,
he slept like a child, like his own child.

She emerged from her reverie and
boiled water to make milk for her seven-month-old son. The child was always
hungry, bawling his jaw off for more milk, between her feedings and the milk
powder. The birds broke into their cacophony as she measured four careful
spoons of milk into the bottle with the water – automatic clockwork hands
moving, and her mind in overdrive with anger and fear. She fed Varun, the apple
of Akhim’s eyes, and lulled him to sleep. Will he also hit his wife? Once Varun
was nodding his head back with gentle snuffles, she slid him into the crib and
went to the living room. She lay there on the cold tiled-floor and stared into
the empty ceiling. The rain-water had seeped in and left damp-patches on white.
Looking at it, she thought of her own body, her torn flesh, like a broken
window screen – tiny jagged splits all over.

She couldn’t remember the exact
date when he first hit her but it was three months after they were married. He
had dragged her by her hair and slapped her for serving him tepid tea – and she
had shrieked on and on. The neighbours pretended not to hear her screams. And
five years of marriage dragged on. At twenty-six she felt like an old hag. Of
course now she was wise enough not to utter a word on such occasions. But
today, her rage got the better of her. It had begun to rain outside again. She
could escape this very moment. But not without slaying that snake, not without
making him suffer, she thought.

In his sporadic good moods, she
pleaded with him:

‘Let us end this marriage Akhim. I
don’t want anything from you. Just let me go.’

‘Why? I love you.’

‘But I don’t. I want to start my
life once again.’

‘You don’t get it do you? I will
never let you go.’

That day stretched on and on, without
an end, in their huge Cleave Colony flat in Shillong, as the rain drummed a mad
beat on the rooftops. She marched up and down in her faded white slippers, the
rubber soles slapping the marble floor.

She thought of home and plonked
herself on the sofa, hugging her knees tight. She had tried getting help from
home but those were just useless phone calls to her mother in Kohima. The
memory of it made her wince at their indifference.

‘Mama, I can’t take it anymore.’

‘But Jenthai, he loves you. How
can you say such things about him?’

‘He has threatened to kill me if I
leave him. I don’t trust him at all.’

‘No he won’t. And what will you do
after leaving him?’

‘I want to start a new life, I
have managed to get a job in Bangalore. My MBA is still valid after five years.’

‘Don’t be silly, Jenthai. You know
your sister is back with us now with her two kids. And your father’s lungs are
getting worse. I tell that old man to keep off the chillum but he will never
listen. The rains worsen it even more.’

She gave up on Mama.

The sales girls in her
neighbourhood supermarket gave her advice about which eye shadow to hide the
marks, about how to use toothpaste on her wounds for swift healing,about the phone number of the nearest police
station to lodge her complaint. The eye shadow came handy many times. After
much trial and error she had zeroed in on a purple shade as her constant
choice.

The continuous rains outside made
everything seem grey, even though it was only mid-afternoon. She opened the
window to the cold air. The raindrops winked at her and screamed – Run Jenthai,
RUN!! She stretched her hands out, let the rain wash over them, dried them on
the folds of her shabby dressing gown and repeated.

I let him have his way all these
years. No, not anymore!

Waves of anger washed over her and
she vomited plain, tart-tasting water-blood into the rain. There had to be a
way to pay him back and to get her freedom. His weakest link – think you dumb
cow!

What did he like? Other women –
no. Booze? That control freak never drank anything but milk. Golf? Yeah, right.
Break his golf sticks or sleep with his caddy.

In frustration, Jenthai started
hitting the wall with her hands. The birds screeched loudly and she screamed at
them, letting out shrill cries into the moist air. Her left hand barely missed
hitting a framed photo. There were many of them on the wall—mostly of him and
Varun. She pulled out a recent one, stroked the laughing people with fingers
that left grubby trails on the glass and hugged it tight to her breasts. She
smiled while tears flowed uninterrupted down her body. She had already chosen
it now. No freedom could ever be bought without slaughter.

In the evening, she went to the
kitchen to wash yesterday’s plates as Varun cried, turning in his crib, loud
enough to fill her head with the sound of birds, utensils and the flowing
water. She came back with the knife, kept it on top of the dressing table and
took Varun to the bathroom for his evening wash. She filled the tub until it
started overflowing and the water spread out, flooding the floor. She kissed
his tiny rose-red brow, ruffled his curls and lowered him gently down into the
water—down and still deep inside it. He made meowing whimpers but she heard
only the vicious lashes of rain outside.

*

When Akhim returned from the
office, she was ready for him in her favourite red sari, face expertly done,
her doe eyes regaining their lost splendour, and her long black hair left
loose.

He scowled when he saw her. ‘Who
are you meeting? You look like a cheap whore in a cinema hall who jerks you off
for twenty bucks.’

She smiled at him.

‘Go to the bathroom. There is a
present for you.’

Something in her eyes made him run
for it.

She picked up the knife from the
table, dragged her packed suitcase to the living room and went in search of
him. His eyes were mad with grief and horror. He clutched her arms in a
deadlock. His fingers dug into her forearms and he was howling.

For a minute she kept quiet,
looking straight into his eyes, curling her lips into a smile he had never
seen. And as his body shook with uncontrollable sobbing she pushed him away
with all her strength and he crashed against the bathroom tiles.

She walked out tall with the knife
clutched firm in one hand and the suitcase in the other. The rains had made way
for a clear, starry, May night. As she drove away, she was filled with a
violent sense of freedom.

GauravDeka studied medicine at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital. When
not writing, he is a practicing physician. His fictions, poetry and essays have
been published in The Open Road Review,
The Tenement Block Review, Café Dissensus, The Four Quarter Magazine, Indian
Ruminations, The Thumb Print Magazine,
Fearless [poetry zine], The Northeast Review, and The Solstice Initiative, among others.
His fiction To Whom He Wrote From Berlin
won The Open Road Review Short Fiction Contest, 2014. He lives in Guwahati,
Assam.

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